Questions NO.s. 67 & 68

Okay, it’s time to post the answers to the 3 questions game we’ve been playing. First of all, by asking more than 3 questions nonbeing wants to be able to play the game by other than the rules for everyone else. He better watch out or people will begin to think he’s American. We will leave it to just 3 questions.

Pearl wanted to know
1: What do you cherish most in my life so far?
Well I work hard on non-attachment, but I confess to being entirely human. I would say my family and friends.

2: What do you think has altered the course of your life so far?
Two things: drugs and the dharma. Drugs expanded my consciousness, while simultaneously causing me to be less than I could have otherwise been. I quit 20-some years ago, but the impact of both the pluses and minuses still linger; the dharma allows me to be a much better human being than I otherwise would have been.

3. What is my favorite ice cream flavor? Espresso.

Nonbeing asked:
1. How do I want to die?
First of all, I attempt to live in this moment. If one is always mentally involved with what has already occurred or what might happen in the future, once misses this moment, which is where our lives are actually lived. I can say that I have no fear of death. But I would guess the direct answer to your question is that I would hope I die with loving-kindness on my mind and in my heart to send me into the next incarnation and facilitate a fortunate rebirth.

2: What is the last thing you want to say to someone, just before you croaked.
‘Everything was beautiful, nothing hurt.’

3: What gives purpose of meaning to my life?
I take refuge in the Buddha, dharma and sangha. That having been said, service to others gives my life meaning, while music puts me in balance.

Justin asked:
1: What’s the best show you have ever seen?
Given the fact I have attended over 50 Grateful Dead shows, several dozen Little Feat shows, and scores of other shows by an infinite variety of other musical acts, plus played hundreds of shows in bands of my own, this is a tough one, especially since many of the hundreds upon hundreds of shows I attended or performed in were done in an altered state (Yes, I actually DID see the words come out of Garcia‘s mouth and swirl around my head on that January evening in 1970).

So, I’ll just talk about the 2 most memorable shows for me. (Note: This does not include the show after which I met Jerry Garcia alone in an elevator).

Show #1: I was in my early 20s. Clapton was God. He’d just left Cream and we heard he had a new group with Steve Winwood called Blind Faith that was coming to Portland. We bought tickets and attended. Blind Faith’s set was great, with Ginger Baker going nuts when the Portland cops pulled the pug on the electricity at 11:30 pm because of curfew issues. But what really made it memorable for me was one of the opening acts. The first opening act was good: it was a little 3-piece rock unit from Ireland with some guitar player I never heard of namedRory Gallagher, But it was the act just before Blind Faith that really blew me away. It was a large unit I’d never heard of before called Delany & Bonnie and Friends. They played incredibly great rock and blues; Bonnie’s voice and singing style made me cream my jeans, and the players. OMG, the players! (This was the first time I had ever heard of any of them) The lead guitar player was this strange white-haired, white-bearded guy named Leon Russell; the back-up singer was incredible and her name was Rita Cooledge (for whom Russell wrote Delta Lady); the piano player, bassist, and drummer would all become The Dominoes, as in Derek and…(Bobby Whitlock on piano, Carl Radle on bass, and Jim Keltner on drums); and the horn section was Jim Price and Bobby Keyes, the foundation of the Rolling Stones’ horn section for the past several decades. I was a puddle on the floor when that band finished it’s set.

The other show was June 12, 1980, a couple of weeks after the initial cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Paramount Theater. Grateful Dead. The second set started with drums, very unusual. And both drummers really got into it, calling up the spirits from incredible depths. This morphed into an extended Scarlet Begonias and jam. Then, without stopping they went into Fire On The Mountain. As they began Fire, I was thinking ‘Wow, they haven’t stopped since they began the set. I looked down at my watch and noticed it was 9:04 pm exactly as they began Fire without a single pause. After the show, we filed out of the Paramount and it was snowing! In June! Only, it wasn’t cold. Yet it was snowing and there was over an inch of snow on the ground. As we waded out into the snow, we realized it wasn’t snow at all. It was volcanic ash. The mountain had erupted again and the winds had blown the ash across the Columbia into Portland. We drove home through the stuff and as I read the paper the next morning, it said the mountain had had a huge eruption beginning at …wait for it…9:07 pm. The boys had called up Pele. The drummers no doubt had awoken her and Fire On The Mountain had enticed her to twirl along. Those guys!!!!!!

2: What is the most beautiful place in these states to live?
I hafta say for many, many years, I would have answered that if I didn’t live in Oregon (which is an incredible place to live!), I would want to live in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Mystical, beautiful, hypnotic. But that was before I spent all those vacations in Lahaina. Love that town. (Did I ever tell you about the time I stood at the urinal next to John Sebastion only go out into the club and see George Harrison and Elton John?) But Maui is too expensive. If I could live anywhere and chose to live in the US, I suppose I would seriously hafta look at living in Eugene, OR. But for sheer beauty, it’s a tough one. Certainly, a very good case could be made for either the Black Hills, Lahaina, and Sedona, AZ.

3: If I could sit down and eat dinner with any historical figure, dead or alive, who would it be? Why?
My Libra scales really come into play with this one. I’ve been with my share of celebraties from my time as a professional musician and as a journalist: Meredith Wilson, Bob Hope, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, just to name a few. Garcia? Thomas Jefferson? Ajan Chah? In the end, it’s very obvious. Provided we could speak a language that we both could understand very, very well, it would be Buddha. To have instruction, receive answers, bask in his glow.

Thanks for playing.....